Notices by ophiocephalic 🐍 (ophiocephalic@kolektiva.social), page 2

Did you know that, if you or your Mastodon instance is blocking Meta, your posts and account can still be data-mined by them? That is, unless your instance has Authorized Fetch activated. More info here: https://kolektiva.social/@ophiocephalic/111602259275182233

#FediPact #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Instagram #AuthorizedFetch

*Democracy*

Another worthy value to socially and technically encode in the ties that could consensually bind the Free Fediverse is direct democracy. Here too, smaller instances scale democracy better, and have proven themselves the trailblazers in giving their users a voice in the decision to protect themselves against Meta, while the mega-server admins have merely decreed unilateral pro-federate proclamations and gestured to the exits for those in their userbase who disagree.

But even for those who affirm it, the cards are stacked against them because there is little in the way of technical aid built in to the apps or the protocol to assist in a democratic process. This again, is a failure of imagination, not of technical capacity. Sure, there are polls; but this function only provides a drive-by snapshot.

A couple of baby steps in the right direction would be local-only posts, and the capacity for groups, including private groups. Both of these are available in certain of the forks or alternative microblogging services, but attempts to incorporate them into mainline Mastodon have been met with obstruction (although some movement toward group functionality was recently announced for the project).

But these capabilities wouldn't directly address the democracy problem in and of themselves. The suggestion offered here is to bake "democracy as a protocol" into whatever replaces ActivityPub in the Free Fediverse. What follows is a speculative scenario. Consider it only a random brainstorm, and one not informed by a developer's knowledge.

One day, a dismissible and retrievable pinned toot appears at the top of every user's feed, issued by that instance's admins. Attention, a proposal is offered to abolish Meta from the face of the Earth, launch Zuckerberg into the sun and turn all of humanity gay. There will be two general assemblies to discuss, one in the daytime on date A and one in the evening on date B. Click here to join the assembly group, or, to chime in as they occur, comment with local-hashtag xxx.

The final proposal will be available to read at this link. The vote will activate for one week, from this to that date. To vote, click on the dancing queercat icon which appears at the top of your feed during that period.

Perhaps this dashed-off exercise gets the gears turning? There would be many other good or better ideas on how to implement a prospect like this. In a Free Fediverse beyond the pathology of growth-at-all-costs, the only limit is the exercise of our collective imagination.

*Decentralized Direct Democracy*

So, decentralization and democracy can enable one another, and a deficit of one degrades the other's viability. As a final example for modeling these principles, let's turn again to the issue of Kolektiva.

As an anti-corporate, online space for anarchists to hang out and shoot the shit, Kolektiva has been a smash. That said, so far it remains an incomplete opportunity for real prefiguration. The centralization of our kind on a single instance is not only ideologically contradictory, it has proven to be an error for the community, as proven by the database compromise.

But there's still potential here, in response to the two crises, to reconstitute into a digital democratic-confederalism within the greater federation. A collective of instances, sharing knowledge and resources. A pooling of infrastructure, a common crowdfunding mechanism and open-source platform for administrative communication (which is not Discord).

And a common charter by which to organize the admin and mod teams horizontally and distribute agency across to users who are inclined to get involved. All of this configured informally and accessible to fellow-travelling servers of any size, to reduce the costs and technical burden of even very small communities firing up and planting their own (black) flag.

Now imagine further, a Free Fediverse comprised of numerous of these confederations, aligning efforts to render cooperation and mutual aid in the task of building and sustaining online community in safety and solidarity. We can nurture whatever kind of network we want to, by routing out of the dead-ends of "monetization" and the growth pathology.

The corporate recuperation of the mega-servers is perhaps a blessing in disguise. With them will go not only the defacto hierarchy of influence which resulted in a small handful of admins and protocol specialists dragging the rest of the network along behind them, but the hierarchical thinking they imposed upon the spectrum of possibilities for what the fediverse could or should be. Towards a decentralized and democratic Free Fediverse beyond capitalist enclosure!

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#FreeFediverse #FediPact #FediblockMeta #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #FacebookFediverse #Democracy #Decentralization #Prefiguration #Kolektiva

A Free Fediverse beyond surveillance capitalism should prioritize deepening its commitment to decentralization by keeping the maximum user count of its instances small.

This addresses practical needs. Smaller communities are easier to moderate, on a human scale which doesn't involve algorithms or invasive third-party data collection. Smaller communities disperse targets for threat models like spambots, and enhance network resilience. And smaller communities are better at scaling democracy, so that we can avoid being pulled back into the circumstance now plaguing the fediverse of mega-server admins unilaterally imposing their will on everyone else.

However, keeping things small can result in problems of its own. Smaller communities means more people grappling with the complexities of trying to set up, administer, moderate, and - not to mention - *fund* operations. A system of mutual aid, beyond the current haphazard status quo, is required.

As an approach to solving these problems, and to instilling a ethos of solidarity devoid of the for-profit "monetization" impulse, consider the concept of the fedifam. :fediverso: 👩👩👧

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#FreeFediverse #FediPact #FediblockMeta #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Democracy #Decentralization #Prefiguration #Fedifam

There are some hot and appropriate takes going around about the "leadership" at the top of major fediverse projects, and its imminent failures. One of those leaders literally describes himself as a "dictator". Well, now his technology has a new dictator, one who has no credible pretense to benevolence.

It seems there are two kinds of FOSS-folk among us. One contextualizes their technical work with a political understanding; be it anarchism, socialism, or some variant of an oppositional outlook, which posits FOSS in an anticapitalist, antiracist or liberatory context. They know there's something out there to stand against, and aspirationally, replace. I salute them and hope we can all build together.

The other, while more-or-less into FOSS, seems to be motivated by nothing deeper than a "tech is neato" ethos. One could argue that it's this second type that has brought us to the crisis.

If tech has any chance to facilitate liberatory - or even alternative - agency (and it's arguable if that chance exists), it has to be about something more than itself. As we watch ActivityPub, Mastodon and Pixelfed get recuperated into the Zuckerverse, here's hoping we can figure out a way to sustain and support those developers of next-gen decentralized and peer-to-peer social networking who understand this

#FediPact #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Instagram #FOSS #Anarchism #Socialism #Anticapitalism

What do you mean we won't be able to see ads from Threads? I've spotted one already

#FediPact #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Instagram .

@noondlyt @MediaActivist
I've previously compared this personalized blocking burden as equivalent to telling people suffering the perils of climate change to go recycle. Not only is it an individualistic answer to a collective problem, but also, it won't solve anything

@jdp23 @tokyo_0 @misc @kylethayer @dalias @darnell
Perhaps there needs to be more advocacy of the *idea* of a democratic fedi before people begin to prioritize it. There's not a great deal of precedent for it right now

Very depressing to see prominent admins reneging on their FediPact pledges. For months users have been migrating - with all the associated difficulties - to instances they thought would be safe from Meta. Do we forget all our promises and convictions just to read the vapid marketing posts of Instagram's asshole CEO?

#FediPact #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Instagram .

@MediaActivist @admin
An anarchist Pixelfed instance would be a good idea! So would an anarchist Lemmy instance, I haven't been able to find one over there with a frequency I'm comfortable with (lotta tankies!)

@MediaActivist
Yeah, not so cool of a maneuver. At least the way Meta is doing it gives everyone time to figure out a safe zone

@MediaActivist
If you can't find one at the moment, I suspect others ill be identifiable soon, considering the turnabout position of Pixelfed's developer

@MediaActivist
Here are two sites which list fedi instances aligned with the FediPact:

https://fedipact.online/

https://fedipact.veganism.social/

Interesting new details have emerged concerning planned machinations for Meta's takeover of the fediverse. The information was revealed at a "data dialogue" in San Francisco on the subject of "Meta’s Threads Interoperating in the Fediverse".

An account at this blog post: https://reb00ted.org/tech/20231208-meta-threads-data-dialogue/

And more info in this Masto thread: https://mastodon.cloud/@joemcl/111566221062518491

It seems that the plan is to gradually roll federation out in stages over the next year. The most telling reveal is in the screenshotted toot by Meta advocate Evan:

"Also, as far as I could tell, the most important use case for them is that a creator could move from Threads to their own server, even if they get de-platformed. I think the major motivator here is Mark Zuckerberg having to go testify in front of Congress twice a year or whatever, and getting grilled by conservative Congresspeople about de-platforming. Being able to say, you can get kicked off Threads but keep your followers, is a big win in this situation."

If correct, the impression here is that Meta is interested in ActivityPub's account portability, so they can offload problematic fascists to the fediverse without too much disgruntlement. They see the fedi as a dumping ground into which they can externalize toxic users without having to either moderate them on their own server, or provoke them by wiping out their social graph.

In Zuckerberg's scheme, our community is to become a landfill for fascism.

#DefederateMeta #FediPact #Meta #Facebook #Threads #Instagram .

Among the schemes discussed to move the Zuckerverse - sorry, Fediverse - forward:

- Monetization of fediverse interactions: https://fediforum.org/2023-09/session/4-a/

- Crypto functionality: https://fediforum.org/2023-09/session/3-d/

- Location tracking: https://fediforum.org/2023-09/session/4-c/

- Individual reputation scoring: https://fediforum.org/2023-09/session/1-d/

- Contact book ingestion: https://fediforum.org/2023-09/session/2-d/

- For-profit revenue models: https://fediforum.org/2023-09/session/5-c/

- Facebook feature incorporation: https://fediforum.org/2023-09/session/4-h/

#FreeFediverse #FediPact #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #FediForum ...and no more

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The notes and accounts from the FediForum in late September suggest that some of "the people who move the fediverse forward", as the conference promotes itself as platforming, are also acutely interested in moving forward the agenda of Meta.

The forum's notes tell the tale. Though a number of topics, including many of genuine benefit, were touched upon, digging through the sessions turns up a path of breadcrumbs that leads straight back to Palo Alto.

https://fediforum.org/2023-09/

#FreeFediverse #FediPact #DefederateMeta #Meta #Facebook #Threads #FediForum ...and no more

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@tsyum @AnarchoDoggo @SallyStrange
Here's a paywall-free link to the WaPo article about pharmacies giving cops medical data

https://archive.is/9hROz

@jdp23 @thisismissem @renchap @Gargron @eilah_tan
Good points through and through. There’s no reason to assume out of hand that allow-list federation would necessarily disadvantage small instances, provided a properly equitable context. An exercise of the technical and social imagination is indicated. Emelia and other devs interested in working on the problem should feel free to let the rest of us know if and how we can support the endeavor, including ideas for funding

The efforts of queer organizer @Swabulah4321 and her comrades to raise mutual aid for the LGBTQA+ residents of Kenya Kakuma refugee camp has been successful enough to fund construction of a defensive fence, which has greatly increased their security.

Now, in addition to ongoing basic survival needs, they aspire to build shelters so they can live and sleep with roofs over their heads. Their fundraiser is currently stalled - let's give it a goose from the fedi! https://fundrazr.com/LGBTKakuma

#MutualAid #Africa #LGBTQ #LGBT

@kevingranade @AnthonyJK @TheGoodSpace
I just posted this passage in another reply in this thread, I'll paste it in here as it's relevant to your remark:

There's also, imo, another issue beyond TBS, and that's Hachyderm/Nivenly. It's complicated; from their perspective they want to help the fedi develop. But these are initiatives driven by tech-industry people; there can be detected a certain "move fast and break things" vestige to their approach. We don't need anyone - particularly from that industry - unilaterally proclaiming themselves the central authority on how to make a fediverse. Any projects of this nature which disregard the urgent need for a broadly horizontal distribution of agency aren't going to fly around here

@AnthonyJK @TheGoodSpace
Agree that in its current form it's dangerous, but the controversy is also an opportunity for everyone to collaborate on a more accountable and democratic means of improving blocklist compilation and distribution on the fedi. You yourself just tossed in a couple of good ideas. There are lots of them circulating, we should build on the prospect